be seen a red
and white patchwork quilt, and a grayish thing that looked like flannel
and smelled to heaven of camphor. We gave up finally, and started down.

Part way down the attic stairs Margery stopped, her eyes fixed on the
white-scrubbed rail. Following her gaze, I stopped, too, and I felt a
sort of chill go over me. No spot or blemish, no dirty finger print
marked the whiteness of that stair rail, except in one place. On it,
clear and distinct, every line of the palm showing, was the reddish
imprint of a hand!

Margery did not speak; she had turned very white, and closed her eyes,
but she was not faint. When the first revulsion had passed, I reached
over and touched the stain. It was quite dry, of course, but it was
still reddish-brown; another hour or two would see it black. It was
evidently fresh--Hunter said afterward it must have been about six hours
old, and as things transpired, he was right. The stain showed a hand
somewhat short and broad, with widened finger-tips; marked in ink, it
would not have struck me so forcibly, perhaps, but there, its ugly red
against the white wood, it seemed to me to be the imprint of a brutal,
murderous hand.

Margery was essentially feminine.

"What did I tell you?" she asked. "Some one was in this house last
night; I heard them distinctly. There must have been two, and they
quarreled--" she shuddered.

We went on down-stairs into the quiet and peace of the dining-room
again. I got some hot coffee for Margery, for she looked shaken, and
found I had missed my train.

"I am beginning to think I am being pursued by a malicious spirit," she
said, trying to smile. "I came away from home because people got into
the house at night and left queer signs of their visits, and now, here
at Bellwood, where nothing _ever_ happens, the moment I arrive things
begin to occur. And--just as it was at home--the house was so well
locked last night."

I did not tell her of the open hall door, just as I had kept from her
the fact that only the contents of Harry Wardrop's bag had been taken.
That it had all been the work of one person, and that that person,
having in some way access to the house, had also stolen the pearls, was
now my confident belief.

I looked at Bella--the maid--as she moved around the dining-room; her
stolid face was not even intelligent; certainly not cunning. Heppie,
the cook and only other servant, was partly blind and her horizon was
the diameter of her largest ke